“You are back early,” Rave noted as they came back. “That was like 20 minutes tops, didn’t ya want to take an hour for each of us?”

Aclysia made a little bow as her dress transformed into her bikini. Apparently, she had a mind for what was best in this setting. “I was thoroughly satisfied by what I received in attention and therefore forewent the need to stretch it out unnecessarily.”

“Pretty much that,” John added a vain phrase as his girlfriend stared at his naked abs like he liked to look at her tits. Having cast his remaining inhibitions aside during his last date and changed only into his bathing trunks, there was most of him revealed. The piece of soft fabric reached down to above his kneecaps, and it was just way too hot to run around in more. Also, it had been nice to feel Aclysia’s back against his chest.

He found his own unwillingness to just drop the shirt silly once he thought about it for more than a second. It wasn’t like his clothes were badly hiding the body of a skeleton anymore. He didn’t like the attention that much, but that was a minor inhibition on this ship. The few people that weren’t toned had carapaces or scales. The Abyss just produced a whole slew of beautiful people, although John almost exclusively looked at the girls.

He placed the bowl on the table, apparently, they were currently eating smoked meat. Notably that was a thing that they could eat without cooking, and it was cut into uneven strips, lacking the finer touch of a skilled cook. Just twenty minutes without Aclysia and the food chain was already interrupted.

“Anyway, let’s see who it is this time,” John grabbed for the bowl, but his girlfriend cheekily pre-empted the gesture and fished a paper out herself.

“Huh, now that’s funny,” she said and turned it towards John.

_______________________________________________________________________

Rave marched at his side with overbearing steps. She didn’t bother to put on a lot more clothes, having just asked for the shirt John no longer wore. The fact that she had checked if it smelled like him before putting it on made him fairly certain she wore it mostly out of non-pure reasons. Rave had never been one to really hide her body. Then again, the shirt wasn’t buttoned anywhere, hanging somewhat loosely over her shoulders. “I am just gonna warn ya, I am taking all that extra time that Aclysia didn’t want.”

With those words she did with complete casualness what he had to initiate with the two girls prior, namely weaving underneath his arm and cuddling up to his side as they walked. “I could ask why,” John said and shifted his arm a bit so it rested comfortably on her shoulder, “but I would be an idiot to complain.”

“Yeah, you would,” she smirked and grabbed his butt. When he gave her a raised eyebrow, she returned a stuck-out tongue. Her piercing returned the sunlight mischievously. “Ya know, if ya get just a little bit bigger, you are gonna get out of easy kissing range, and I don’t want that.”

“Tell me about it,” John grumbled. “Seriously, I may get back problems from cuddling if I get any taller. You are at the perfect height to put my arms around right now, but Eliza is already a huge problem.” Rave laughed. “I am serious!” he insisted. “She is just too far down there to walk arm in arm with.”

“Just gotta put your hand on her hips instead,” his girlfriend told him, having her own hand travel up to where his bones met with his sides. “Anyway, where are we going?”

John smirked, “Where aren’t we going?”

A few minutes later they were playing laser ping-pong against each other in a local arcade. The ball darted back and forth, quicker with each block up to a point where some people were watching them outperform them with rather stupid speed. In the end Rave proved victorious and he had to buy her some ice cream.

“How does it feel like by the way?” she asked in a teasing tone while they were standing in line. This wasn’t going to be a serious conversation, he could tell that much.

“How does what feel like?” he returned as the ice was handed over the counter. Rave had picked vanilla and strawberry. John just got one peppermint chocolate. She took a cone, he took a cup.

“Knowing that even as a semi-ripped guy you aren’t the person with the most attractive midriff around,” she let him know.

John watched her tongue slide over the ice cream. “Well, I am certainly not opposed to it. Also what the hell do you mean ‘semi-ripped’? I am way more toned than you are!”

“That’s cause I keep a healthy amount of body fat around,” she let him know. “Metra might be able to rock that look, but I ain’t.”

“Did you ever try or how do you know?” John asked. “Is this where I find some picture of you where you look like a pink-haired Arnold Schwarzenegger?”

She gently bit his shoulder with cold, cold teeth. “No, ya douche,” she answered, “but I did go on diet once to see and turned right back around when I looked like… dunno kinda like you right now. Can’t say I find overly visible muscles generally attractive.”

“You and me both,” John nodded. They finished their ice and took the teleporter down into the underwater parts of the ship to look out into the ocean for a bit. “Honestly, I wouldn’t have described my dream girl as athletic, was thinking thinner. In nature your kind of body just wins out though.”

“Ya mean because I don’t look like I would break if ya take me roughly?” she asked playfully pulling on the band of his trunks before letting them snap back into place. “Not that that was a concern when we met.”

John rolled his eyes, “That is such a 2017 thing to say.”

“Oh, don’t gimme that meme,” she copied his gesture, “I don’t like it.”

“Really? Why?” John asked.

“When did saying it’s X time suddenly became an argument? Makes no sense,” she explained.

“I think it’s more of an expression of ‘how do these things still happen in the modern world’,” he made the case. Not that he cared either way, he was just playing along.

“Stupid way to say that,” Rave maintained, “not wrong, but stupid. Kinda like that one time when Mom cared for me for 10 minutes and tried to get me to learn to sing.”

They went back up to one of the malls and just window shopped. John looked at a watch like he had any intent of actually buying it. “Really, she did that? And here I thought your mother was just a heartless harlot back in the day.”

“That’s a nice alter- litery… what do you call those exactly again?” Rave pointed out.

“Alliteration, and I don’t know if two words already count as one though.”

“Dunno either, anyway, no she had like 10 minutes to spare a few days in the month… for me and Liz at the same time,” she sarcastically clicked her tongue. “I know, that suddenly makes her mother of the century. Total role model.”

They switched shop; to be exact, they were in a weirdly big part of a barber. “I mean, at least you got to inherit cool hair,” he tried to make a joke. Rave always had a hard time sticking to bad moods, which was but one of her many virtues. When she was around him, and John took great pride in that, it was rare to see her with a frown for more than 30 seconds. Felt like he was doing the ‘loving boyfriend’ thing pretty much right. Of course, she also made it easy on him by being awesome.

“I guess,” she laughed. “Also you are looking at me like ya want to marry me right now.”

“Didn’t we already establish that I do want to do that one day in the future?” he asked, not even close to the amount of nervous he was the first time he had even proposed (lack of a better word) the idea to propose.

“Ya better make that a good day,” she poked his chest, “I only get that day once! Also, I want the best ring. Best ring for best girl.”

“At least my girl is modest,” he sarcastically stated.

“Nope,” Rave wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down for a lengthy kiss. “But she is a treasure.”

He reached over her ass after glancing over her shoulder. At first he wanted to make sure nobody was watching them. Upon seeing that somebody was pretty clearly staring at her bountiful backside, he did it anyway. “I can agree that there is a lot of booty involved with her.”

“Did ya just grope me extra hard because someone is watching us and ya wanna show that I am your girl?” She saw right through him without even turning her head. He just winked, and she giggled. “Gimme another kiss to make it extra apparent.”

No sane man would say no to that, and a man that a blank girl with a connection to a dimension populated by sentient vacuum had called crazy would just go ahead and do it. “Anyway, what are we doing in a barber’s shop? Not like your hair needs any care.”

“One,” she raised the index finger of her right hand, “my hair needs care; just because I don’t need to brush don’tcha forget the copious amounts of shampoo I use to get this whole fluffy mass soaped up. Hair doesn’t feel like cashmere by default, ya know?” John, who was also using her shampoo because it was just that amazing, had to concede that point. “B,” she raised her thumb, “ya should get your own damn shampoo…”

“Could you stop reading my thoughts?” John asked. “Or I will start reading yours!”

“Aww, it’s cute that you think ya have thoughts aside from how lucky a guy you are,” she teased; she was in a bragging mood today.

“Admittedly, always a background program,” he answered, “not solely your accomplishment though.” He didn’t say that in a judgemental way, they were just play fighting, as they pretty much always were.

“It kinda is, because I allowed ya to try your hand at that whole polygamy thing,” she verbally jabbed back, “but sure, let’s say I am just up there most of the time.”

“That is fair to say, and I am 100% sure that I am up there,” he tapped against her forehead, “most of the time myself.”

“This is where I could make an easy ‘actually you are down there’-joke,” she pointed her jaw down her body and winked, “but that’s beneath me. Sure, my cute little nerd, ya get to be up here a lot. You are here at all times though,” she pressed herself strongly against him, her small breasts squishing on his chest. “Ya feeling it?”

Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, her heart drummed against his chest with the strength of a lover. His own beat in kind, a rhythm. “Root of 9,” he said and raised the ring finger of his left hand, “you are thinking about letting your hair grow longer.”

“See, I knew ya were up here,” she laughed. “Know why as well?”

“Because you know I prefer a bit longer hair from the talks I have with Eliza every time we have to cut her hair down and the fact that Aclysia’s hair is still as long as it is when she wants to fulfil my every wish?” he guessed.

“Actually, it’s just the former, typical of ya to overthink things,” she laughed. “I mean, ‘root of nine’, really?”

He guided her out of the product section and over to the cashier. “Hey, I need to refresh my nerd label every now and again. It’s hard to get internet cred with a girlfriend, although the fact that you are half-japanese helps.”

“Okay? Why are we going over here though?” Rave wanted to know as John placed her in front of the brunette… John didn’t even know, some kind of human with entirely purple eyes. Was it a different race or just someone with a very weird ability? Every day in the Abyss was a rollercoaster of questions.

“Because, the girlfriend of John Newman isn’t going to do her own hair like someone who isn’t the future significant other of someone who can literally create money through little effort,” he told her. “Excuse me, I know we were pretty loud over there, so I guess you know what we want?”

“Sure, what length exactly?” the brunette asked; her voice had a high-pitched echo attached to it. “Can work with any length measure, including a point of your body.”

“John, growing hair is super easy,” Rave told him, “just apply some of the stuff and wait like 20 minutes.”

“And then you grow too little at first, apply some more, then have too much and we need to get here anyway,” he argued. “In addition to her being a professional. If there is one thing in life I want to see it is your magnificent chaos of a hair when it is touched up by someone who knows what she is doin. Come on, I am paying for this anyway.”

“We seriously need to start grinding again so I can earn some money,” she sighed before she told the cashier what she wanted from her services. They were then guided over to a seat, and Rave was put under one of those large blankets that prevented hair from going everywhere. “It’s nice to have ya be my walking wallet, but being financially dependent all the time rubs me the wrong way.”

“Once we get back on land, we will have to spend some time in dungeons anyway,” John said, eyeing his finances with a wary look. He acted all benevolent, but at the current pace he would be surprised if he got off the ship with a lot of cash. The reason why he still did it was because housing, drinks and food (in pantry and restaurant) were all provided, so there was no reason to be too stingy.

What followed where 20 minutes of the world’s weirdest hair fashion session. It began with the cashier turned hairdresser explaining that she would begin scanning Rave’s hair to make out the correct curliness factor, which she would then insert into a formula about how much of the magical paste she would need. Then she made a measurement of Rave’s head to see where to best apply how much of it depending on how Rave wanted her tips. “If you want to still have them on a similar length, we will need to put more here and here,” the hairdresser explained, “also…” the explanations went on as John just gave his girlfriend a long stare.

‘It’s super easy, right, Jane?’ he tried to say though his brown eyes alone.

‘Ja, ja, Brainiac,’ he could hear her answer.

That done with, the paste was massaged into the skin of her head, they were given some beverages and alone time while it grew out, and then the cashier returned to put on the finishing touches. John actually sat back with his eyes closed for the later stages, he wanted to be surprised.

The sound of light cloth being lifted and someone standing up. Then her voice, “Ya can look, tiger.” He did and found himself wordless at what he saw.

Her neon-pink hair had previously been down to her neckline, extremely curvy at the tips with individual strands of a slightly darker pink and overall a masterwork of chaos to behold. Now that it was longer, it kept many of the same values. Except for the darker strands, those magically removed themselves. John could just assume that it was the curse at work.

Her old style had given her a sexy ‘recently woke up’ look. Her new style was an impossible cascade of pink where the different streams just agreed on the general direction being downwards but not on the exact path each of them should take, tips curling away from her, but less violently so, taking over half the length of the entire strand. Those sticking out strands then created something akin to a cloud of caught light around the thick of her main hair. It was like the previous amount of chaos had simply stretched over a larger area.

Where some of it had previously run criss-cross over her face (without ever getting in the way, however that was possible), it now was framing her teardrop shaped face. Her bangs had been cut to the length of her eyebrows, parting above the right one into two halves of unequal sizes, neither of which went over her eyes.

Overall, she had exchanged some of the impossibility of her hair for a whole lot of ordered femininity while losing none of the sexy. It was weird how big a difference just a new hairstyle and change of length, from chin to middle of the back, could make. Previously he would have found the idea of her ever wearing more business-like clothing impossible. Now she looked like she could wear whatever she wanted and rock it with a perfect balance between business and after-work party. Rave reminded John a lot more of Nariko now, although he didn’t say that out loud.

She twirled on the spot, her voluminous hair flying around her like solar rays breaking through the clouds, to show off all of it. Part of it stuck on her shoulder and laid there like a mass of bubble-gum coloured cashmere.

“How do you say something above ‘the most beautiful woman I have ever seen’`?” he was so awestruck he actually whispered those words.

“Ya say what I want to say next together with me,” Rave smiled widely, flicking that strand of her hair back over her shoulder.

“”This is so soft, oh my everything,”” they said at once, and John gave her an audacious grin, “”Not that ya dumbass… Seriously, Johnny, stop it!”” He couldn’t help but giggle as she actually gave him an annoyed look.

“Sorry, on three, okay?” as John suggested that the hairdresser went back to her register with a huge smile on her face. At least they were radiating their good mood to those around.

“Okay,” the pink hue inside Rave’s iris glinted happily, “one, two…”

Three never came, but their words still landed on the same moment.

“”I love you.””